It is conventional to provide appliances, such as clothes washers, dishwashers, cooking ranges, baking ovens or the like with control consoles. Such consoles generally extend along a rear edge of an upper surface of an associated appliance and are a rigid portion thereof. Such consoles generally include a front-facing wall observable to the user which carries conventional controls, be they push-buttons, dials, touch sensor controls or the like. A separate rear panel closes the console or alternatively a rear panel of the entire appliance has an upper portion which closes the rear of the console and the conventional control mechanisms housed therein.
Such conventional appliances, be they "white" goods or "brown" goods, present several problems, such as the cost involved in shipping such appliances in conventional cardboard or corrugated board cartons or packaging. The total height of the carton must include the maximum vertical height of the appliance from its bottom to the top of the console. Since the console projects anywhere between four to eight inches above the top panel, each carton must be of a total height to accommodate the "major" height of the appliance plus the additive "console" height. It is prohibitively expensive to score and blank corrugated board to match the exterior contour of the appliance and, therefore, corrugated cartons are necessarily wasteful of paperboard because such cartons are of an overall height corresponding to the total height of the appliance, including the console projecting above the top panel.
Another problem associated with such conventional upright consoles is the tendency of homeowners, installers, service personnel, etc. to utilize the upright console as a "gripping" or "handle" portion. It is not uncommon to see a serviceman stand in front of an appliance, reach across the top surface, grasp opposite corners of the console and apply pushing, pulling, torquing and/or lifting forces to place the appliance in a desired location or remove the appliance therefrom. Consoles are not necessarily sufficiently sturdy to accommodate this type of misuse and damage thereto is not uncommon.
Another problem with such conventional consoles is the difficulty of accessing the console interior for servicing and/or repair. If the appliance is located with its rear panel against a vertical wall, as is most likely the case when dealing with clothes washers, clothes dryers, ranges or the like, the vertical wall generally precludes access to the console interior or renders the same extremely cumbersome. In most cases a serviceman would find it necessary to pull the appliance away from the wall, again most likely grasping the console, and creating the damage heretofore described. However, even after pulling the appliance away from the wall, the rear panel of the entire appliance most often must be removed to gain access to the console interior. If the console itself has a separate rear panel, removing the panel is relatively simple, but repair to the interior controls presents an access problem, unless the serviceman or repairman can actually get behind the appliance or the appliance can be rotated or turned sufficiently to allow access to the console interior from the backside.